


Departure

by Lucterna



Category: GOT7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 03:59:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucterna/pseuds/Lucterna
Summary: "You're bleeding all over my carpet."





	Departure

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a Halloween drabble game I did last year.

Your heart pounds in your chest and you’re terribly certain that whatever is chasing you will be able to hear how it rattles wildly against your ribcage.  Still, you keep going, darting in and out of the treeline along the edge of the road.  The chill night air sears your lungs as you hurry, leaving behind your broken down car.  The lights are far in the distance now, leaving the night almost black.  Foliage and debris crackle underfoot.

Behind you, the thing you had slammed into, a giant blot of blackness in an already pitch night, hurries, but never so fast as to overtake you.  Maybe it enjoys the chase, loves listening to your thundering heartbeat and the scent of copper on the air where it runs freely from the wounds down your back.  When you had first stepped out of the car, shaking and calling out to nothing, trying to figure out what you’d hit, it had bowled you over.  Claws bit first through your jacket and shirt and then into the soft expanse of your back as a scream was ripped out of your throat.

Somehow you’d thrown it off and then you’d run.

In the distance, set back from the road, you can just make out a house.  A squat brick building with white shutters and some old car in the drive, all the lights on in the windows.  Though your back and lungs and heart scream for you to slow down and rest, your brain is still kicked into overdrive.  Besides, if you listen hard enough, you know that creature is still after you.  So you pour on what little speed you have left.  If you can just make it to the house, maybe they’ll have a phone.  You can call an ambulance and maybe your parents.  

Fifteen more minutes and the snarls growing closer and closer behind you, you finally stumble up the drive.  Twice you fall, hands and knees planting painfully in the sparse gravel, but you don’t even bother to sweep the rocks and dirt from your palms.  Seconds later you fall against the front door, pounding on it.

“Please, someone, help!   Let me in, please!”

The lights in the windows flicker, on and off and on again, but you’re too tired to care why, gasping for breath and leaning all your weight against the worn front door.  All your focus is on the way everything hurts, the way you can still feel the bloody tears down your back leaking with blood.  One more time, you smash your first against the door, crying, “Please, let me in.”

From the other side, you hear a calm, masculine voice, “Are you sure that’s the decision you want to make?”

It sounds as if it speaks directly into your ear rather than through the door and for a second you whirl your tired body around, looking for the source of the voice.  But the stoop is empty save for you and one cracked flower pot.  The voice must be coming from inside.

One more glance reveals your pursuer has broken out of the treeline.  There are only moments before it will reach you.  Against the night it is still an emptier shade of absolute blackness, huge and bristling and broken only by two gleaming white pinpricks that you can only assume are its eyes.

To the person behind the door, you shriek, “Of course that’s what I want!  Let me in before it gets me!”

The voice sighs, still too close to your ear, like you might actually feel the warm breath of it across your neck.  But a second later, the door opens, allowing you to fall in.  It slams shut so hard as to rumble the house at just the same moment that the creature smashes into it.  But it cannot break through, no matter how much it snarls and claws and throws itself against it.

Inside the house itself is absolutely silent, the lights are too bright.  The furniture appears a decade or two out of date, but it is tastefully arranged to complement the fireplace along one wall and the coffee table in the middle of it.  In front of that coffee table is the owner of the voice, a young man who seems no older than you, his features thin, but soft, hair dark and tousled to fall over equally dark eyes.  He looks pensive and perhaps distantly sad, but you’re not exactly worried about that as you push yourself up off the floor.  

“Thanks,” you tell him between ragged breaths, doubling over to put your hands on your knees while you try to catch it.  Your back seems to have gone numb, the wounds no longer clamoring for attention.  You wouldn’t mind it if not for the fact it can only mean terrible things.  So without preamble, you ask your would be savior, “Can I use your phone?”

“I don’t have a phone,” he says, and as you gape at him, he remarks, “You’re bleeding all over my carpet.”

“Uh,” you feel like a fish out of water, your mouth opening and closing and his words vaguely remind your back that it should be hurting, the sensation returning with a hard sting that makes a shudder run up your spine.  “Right, yeah that’s… that’s kind of why I need to use a phone.  How do you not have a-”

But the second before you can ask, you see it, the telephone.  It sits right there on the coffee table.  It’s as ancient as the rest of the house’s effects, but it is a phone.  A silver cord runs from it to the wall beside the fireplace.  

The young man’s eyes follow your own and a sigh escapes him, “Sorry, what I mean to say is… I don’t have a phone you can use.”

Fear begins to bubble up inside you again, a cold sensation in your gut that rival’s the night’s chill outside.  “What are you talking about?” And though you don’t want to seem ungrateful, you dart forward, past the man and to the phone on the coffee table.  

When you pick it up, rather than a dial tone, there is static and a high pitched shrieking that makes your head feel like it’ll split in half.  The lights in the house flicker again.

Dropping the receiver, you round on the young man who has not moved an inch since you looked up at him, “What the hell is going on?  What - what are you?”

His features break into a sad smile and you think, if you were not scared out of your mind, you would find him beautiful.  In fact, you sort of do already.  In the background the shrieking continues, but it’s distant and muted.  Only now do you notice that he looks unnaturally pale, in fact, that he is translucent.  You can clearly see the wall behind him, through him, make out the picture frames that adorn the white plaster surface.  Your breath seems to freeze in your throat.

“My name is Mark,” he says and finally he moves, drifting past you without moving his legs so that he can hang up the phone you’d dropped.  

You scramble away from him, tripping at the edge of the sofa and falling back onto it.  There is no pain from your back hitting the cushion.  

“It’s been a long time since I had company,” he tells you, sitting at the edge of the coffee table, his haunting eyes catching yours.  “I asked if you were sure, because you could have… well, I mean, if you hadn’t run so far, I guess you could have been saved.”

Your hands curl into fists at the top of your knees and you want to scream, but you manage to say, “What are you talking about?” though your voice is small and desperate.

Mark tilts his head towards the front door where you’d fallen in, “The carpet’s still clean.”

When you look, you find that he is right.  The carpet, though a hideous shade of mustard shag, is free of the scarlet stain that your fall should have left on it.  Panic stricken, you turn back to him, “What -”

“Don’t worry, you can stay here with me… You’re the first visitor in a long time, so until you feel ready to move on, I’ll take care of you.”

In the morning, on the side of the highway, motorist’s assistance finds your car, the front end curled around a tree, and your near frozen and lifeless form slumped over the steering wheel.


End file.
